Although I wholeheartedly agree with Hill's reply, that this is simply a missing image, I want to share some thoughts with you people who may still be on the fence or who still believe this is a cover-up.

First, a bit about Google Earth Community history and the release of Google Sky...

Introducing Sky in Google Earth

New feature in Google Earth enables users to explore space from their computer

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (August 22, 2007) –
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Sky, a new feature
that enables users of Google Earth to view the sky as seen from planet
Earth. Source

So Sky was released on 8/22/2007. The very next day we got our first post about the "blocked out" area here on the GEC. See this post dated 8/23/2007. So this area was blank from the beginning. There are those who say "Nibiru" or "Planet X" used to be there, then was removed. They are mistaken or lying. Or stoned.

But what I really wanted to say is something else... the first time I saw this claim, and then viewed the area in question, I Laughed Out Loud. Why? The main reason was the sheer size of the black area. I mean, there are hundreds of stars "blocked out", it's a HUGE area. If this was censorship it had to be done by The Three Stooges! If you're going to hide something, you want to do it in a way that nobody notices. You want me to believe that the techs at Google were able to stitch thousands of rectangular images together onto a spherical model... but they couldn't photoshop out a planet?? This was the best they could do to hide something?

HA!

There's one more thing I want to share with you...

Let's talk about planets. How do you find them among the stars? What do they look like in images like we have in Google Sky? I'll show you one.

Dwarf planet Eris
is in the above image. Do you see it? No? I know it's there. I verified
it with Mike Brown himself, the astronomer who discovered it. Can you
find it?

No, of course not. Planets (and dwarf planets) look exactly like stars
in telescope imagery. Any one of those dots could be a planet. The only
way to find out if any of those dots is a planet is by comparing two
images of the same piece of sky, taken at different times, and seeing if
any dots move. It's known as the blink comparator method. It was used
to find Pluto in 1930. An updated, computerized version of the method is
still used today. (Can anyone guess where I'm going with this?)

Let's look at the original images of the discovery of Pluto. I animated
the originals to show you the "blink" method, demonstrating the movement
of Pluto (from Jan. 23 to Jan. 29):

Image Credit: Lowell Observatory Archives

You see that it's a tiny dot. Well, Pluto is a relatively tiny planet. You can see that if this were just one still image, you'd never know a planet was there. And, in fact, a scientist named Lowell spent his last years looking for Pluto and died before it was discovered. Ironically, he had taken a photo of it and missed it.

The same thing goes for larger planets like Jupiter. A Jupiter-sized planet would appear just as any of the larger dots in the above image, indistinguishable from stars.

In other words... even if Nibiru/Planet X really existed (it doesn't) and was somewhere in Google Sky, there is just no freakin' way that anybody would notice it. There would be absolutely no reason to hide it. It would be a dot among dots. You couldn't prove it was a planet anyway, using Google Sky. You can't prove Jupiter exists with G Sky.

Before I go I want to show you that I am way better than The Three Stooges at covering up planets. I made Eris disappear from this image:

Can you find which dot I removed? :D Am I way better than the Google team that put Sky together? No way. I don't know half the things they know. My point is, if I can make a planet disappear without a trace, they can do it even better. You bet your sweet bippy! (Okay I'm dating myself, but I can't be the only one who remembers "Laugh In".)

So... was that area "blocked out" by NASA, "The Government", or those Evil Google employees? You decide. Thanks for listening.